(“Photo taken from blogforcuba.typepad.com”)
The recent declarations made by former Cuban president Fidel Castro to the journalist Jeffrey Goldberg have started an international media commotion. Within the island, however, the repercussions remained virtually unknown to the population because, save for a few exceptions within the power nomenclature and a minimal number of citizens who have the rare opportunity to inform themselves, barely anyone has heard the maximum leader acknowledge, 51 years after his ascent to power, that “the Cuban model does not work, not even for us”.
It is interesting but I don’t understand it. Why such a commotion over a fact that has already been confirmed? The peaceful Cuban opposition has been stating this for a very long time now, and just for saying that same phrase the authorities sent 75 dissidents to prison in March of 2003, many of whom are still imprisoned, and not to mention the long list of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience that have passed through Castro’s prisons during half a century of totalitarianism.
This whole egotistical show put on by the figure who is still the First Secretary of the Communist Party simply means that only he can speak without censorship. From my point of view, I don’t think that the “revolutionary leader” regrets his sins and that he is starting to ask for forgiveness. His love of power and his need to “represent” are now leading him, senile and all, to make many errors, which luckily for us, display his true personality.
Now, the Cuban government has started to try to adopt measures that distance it from its usual and traditional leftist politics. What will happen now with the “Cuban model”? It’s difficult to predict. Cuban civil society needs free space, and perhaps Fidel’s words can serve as a point of reference so people could start demanding their freedoms. The everyday citizens, who are worn out by ideology and tormented with vital problems, need a viable model that would once again grant them a dignified way of life and would allow them to join global society. They are in need of a country where screaming out what their conscience feels into the four winds is not a penal sin. Those who still live off of the State, hanging onto its every word, have just received a warning. In reality, it wouldn’t cost a thing to toss this “utopian” and archaic Cuban model into the trash can, changing it for a new system where we would all have the access to rights.
Pablo Pacheco
(This essay was written by Pablo Pacheco for the newspaper “La Epoca”)
Translated by Raul G.
September 18, 2010
